A few years ago, the editors of Guitar World magazine compiled what we feel is the ultimate guide to the 100 Greatest Guitar Solos of All Time.

The list, which has been quoted by countless artists, websites and publications around the world, starts with Richie Sambora's work on Bon Jovi's “Wanted Dead or Alive” (100) and builds to a truly epic finish with Jimmy Page's solo on "Stairway to Heaven" (01).

On June 10, we kicked off a summer blockbuster of our own — a no-holds-barred six-string shootout. We pitted Guitar World's top 64 guitar solos against each other in an NCAA-style, 64-team single-elimination tournament. Every day, we asked you to cast your vote in a different guitar-solo matchup as dictated by the 64-team-style bracket. Now Rounds 1 and 2 have come and gone, leaving us with 16 guitar solos and eight matchups.

So ...

WELCOME TO THE SWEET 16 ROUND, where all 16 still-standing solos will go head to head before your eyes! As always, you can vote only once per matchup, and the voting ends as soon as the next matchup is posted.

In some cases (like today), genre will clash against genre; a thrash solo might compete against a Southern rock solo. But please get real: They're all guitar solos, played on guitars, by guitarists, most of them in some subset of the umbrella genre of rock. When choosing, it might have to come down to, "Which solo is more original and creative? Which is more iconic or important? or Which one kicks a larger, more impressive assemblage of asses?"

How fitting it is that a song titled "One" is part of our very first Sweet 16 matchup. Yes, Metallica's "One" (07), featuring a guitar solo by Kirk Hammett, is squaring off against the Beatles' "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" (42), which features a solo by Eric Clapton. Although Jimmy Page alone is responsible for four guitar solos in our Sweet 16 group, "One" is Metallica's only Sweet 16 guitar solo (including both Hammett and James Hetfield) and "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" is Clapton's only Sweet 16 guitar solo.

“I had a very clear idea of where I wanted to go with my guitar playing on …And Justice for All,” recalls Kirk Hammett. “Unfortunately we didn’t have enough time for me to fully execute my ideas.

“We worked on basic tracks for six or seven months, and then I only had eight or nine days to record all my leads because we were heading out on the Monsters of Rock tour [with Van Halen, Scorpions, Dokken and Kingdom Come]. To get that done, I had to do incredibly long, grueling days—like 20 hours at a pop—and it took so much out of me. As soon as I finished one solo, I had to do the next one. There was no time to breathe, as the whole vibe was to do it the best you could and keep moving. It was a pretty frustrating experience, to be honest.”

Despite these frustrations, Hammett was immediately pleased with most of his work on “One,” which featured three very different solos. “The first solo and the last solo were completely worked out in advance because I had been playing them for months,” recalls Hammett. “So in those cases it was just a matter of fitting in tone-wise. I elected to use a clean sound in the intro solo, which was the first time we used that kind of sound. I dialed it up on an ADA preamp and, once we found the right sound, it just flowed.

"For the final solo, I used my conventional lead sound of the time. That one flowed quickly, too—once I worked out the intro right-hand tapping technique, a process I really enjoyed. I wanted a high energy intro that would be different from anything I had done in the past. So I got those two solos done quickly and was pleased with them. But the middle one just wasn’t happening.”

Ultimately, Hammett was so displeased with the results of his second solo that he returned to the studio in the midst of the Monsters of Rock tour—spending a day at New York’s Hit Factory with producer Ed Stasium. “I redid the entire second half of the second solo and worked to make it all fit in,” Hammett recalls. “It was better, although I was never totally satisfied with it. I guess I did a good enough job.”

Apparently so. The song would soon become Metallica’s first legitimate radio and MTV hit, its solos firmly established as Hammett signature licks.

“When we actually started recording this, it was just me playing the acoustic guitar and singing it, and nobody was interested,” recalls the song’s author, George Harrison. “Well, Ringo probably was, but John and Paul weren’t. When I went home that night, I was really disappointed because I thought, Well, this is really quite a good song; it’s not as if it’s crap!

"And the next day I happened to drive back into London with Eric [Clapton], and I suddenly said, ‘Why don’t you come play on this track?’ And he said, ‘Oh, I couldn’t do that; the others wouldn’t like it…’ But I finally said, ‘Well, damn, it’s my song, and I’d like you to come down.’ So he did, and everybody was good as gold because he was there.

"I sang it with the acoustic guitar with Paul on piano, and Eric and Ringo. Later, Paul overdubbed bass. Then we listened back to it and Eric said, ‘Ah, there’s a problem, though; it’s not Beatlesy enough.’ So we put the song through the ADT [automatic double tracker] to wobble it a bit.”

As much as I love both songs, it was a relatively easy call for me. "One" is why I started playing guitar, and it's still one of my favorite solos. Seeing as "floods" and " cemetery gates" have been voted out already, this is my current pick for winning.

I guess it depends on your taste and criteria used to choose. Hammett's work is very good but it isn't memorable and it doesn't really add anything special to the song. Just about any kind of shredding played in the right key and with the right tempo would have the same result. Clapton's solo is the signature to the song and the song can be recognized just by hearing a few notes of the solo. That's my criteria and why I picked Clapton even though Hammett is playing something more technically difficult.

Soloing to a song that's for a guitar or one that's about the guitar playing of a song while doing a soloing straight through the whole song may work and soloing in a song that builds into a slow solo will have more time and not to continue to sound like the whole song will make the solo both are still do able.

Considering the Clapton was the grandaddy of what Kirk is doing part of me says vote for Eric, but the beaty of the composition and stylistic differences, also pure chops of Kirk's part make me vote Metallica on this one.

I was really hoping that the delay in getting the sweet 16 started was due to Guitar World getting a more reliable voting system in place than polldaddy, which has a highly publicized and super easy exploit to get around their one-time-only voting block. BTW, I just successfully voted six times for WMGGW using this exploit (with me receiving the “Thank you for voting!” message each time), and five times for One (just to keep things fair). This is the same exploit that the Queen Facebook members have been using all this time. It really needs to be known how flawed, EASILY exploitable, and wide open Polldaddy really is!